


Five Views of Jeje's Life

by Ione



Category: Inda series - Sherwood Smith
Genre: Canon Compliant, Other, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21671485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ione/pseuds/Ione
Summary: If she'd ever even thought about it, Jeje would have trenchantly resisted a record of her life. Especially if she found out who was looking through that distant mirror . . .
Relationships: Jeje/Tau
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Jeje Discovers Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bygoshbygolly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoshbygolly/gifts).



“Handsomely, now.” Captain Beagar’s voice sharpened as the _Ryala Pim_ and its consorts sailed between the two warships into the harbor. “Handsomely does it—do not anticipate the signal. They may take it amiss.”

The captain of the windward Khanerenth warship had posted a youngster on the foredeck, whose function was to convey by a combination of flags and shouts the sails the _Pim Ryala_ was to furl, and the direction to steer as they glided into the calmer waters of the harbor. When the Khanerenth warships first surrounded the _Pim Ryala_ , Captain Beagar hoped he would be able to get a decent trade for his goods, a hope that had eroded to dread that his cargo would be seized altogether, and he and his crew . . .

He did not like to let his mind go in that direction.

So he reclasped his hands behind his back, trusting to his implicit obedience, and his captain’s green coat—a _merchantman_ ’s green coat—to make it plain that he had no interest in whatever military matters had caused the Khanerenth navy to surround them and force them toward land.

At her station on the foremast, Jeje cast a glance up at the sky, at the sails, at the flow of the current, and at the harbor’s mouth, anticipating the order to haul down the sail. She stood with one hand to a gently humming stay as she swept another look round—this time at her fellow crew members.

The captain stood erect and somber on the captain’s deck. No surprise there. Tau rode easily on the main yard, his wheat-gold hair blowing back as he watched Inda on the foredeck. Directly above him, Norsh glowered at Tau in preference to the Khanerenth threat. No surprise there, either.

As the ship heeled, Norsh said nastily, “Have a hankering for the rat, pretty boy?”

“Quiet! Fore and aft,” Kodl snapped, his pale gaze glaring up at Norsh, who reddened.

Tau sighed—Jeje couldn’t hear it, but she saw it in the way his chest rose and fell under the wind-rippled shirt as he turned his head and gazed out to sea.

Jeje thought sourly, _Even I know if you want someone’s attention, you don’t pick at them_. But Norsh didn’t seem to know how else to behave.

Another heave on a swell, and the orders began coming. By the time they had everything battened down, and had let the anchor go in the precise spot indicated, the sky had clouded up.

The young mate, or lieutenant, or whatever he was (Jeje knew nothing about naval hierarchies and cared less) bellowed in Dock Talk, “Get yez dunnage and into the boats, inna quarter-glass, then we come aboard ye with swords out.”

The ship rats clustered with their own watches out of habit, then headed toward the same boat. Fassun and Vorzscin—acting as coxswains—separated them out, and put the rats in the bows of the two long boats—after the rats had done all the work of loading everyone’s else’s dunnage in to their exacting specifications.

The captain and the mates went in the gig. From the way Fassun and Vorzscin gave orders it was clear to rats and sailors alike that they were to row in creditably, and not look like a bunch of scruffy dock hands, or worse, pirates, slumping disconsolately.

“We’ve done nothing amiss,” Fassun muttered.

“They don’t seem to know it,” Faura retorted with a sour glance and a toss of her dark hair.

No one had an answer to that. Instead, they were full of questions—what had they done, why were they being forced to land, what would happen to them?

When the gig docked, and Tau absently reached down to haul short Jeje up from the rocking craft, Faura bumped up behind Jeje and muttered goadingly, “Glad you left your fishers, Jeje?”

No, Jeje was _not_ glad, but she would have bitten through her own tongue rather than admit it to Faura, who had turned so unaccountably nasty of late. She’d never been friendly, but at least she’d been decent when Jeje first came aboard, showing her where to stow her gear, and introducing her to Sails.

As yet, Jeje had no idea that Faura bitterly resented every slight attention, no matter how brief or absent, that Tau showed to any other female. Jeje only knew that you never won against Faura, so she kept silent and gave a slight shrug. Then she climbed the slimy ladder to the dock and scuffed up behind Inda as the crew of the _Pim Ryala_ fell in line beside the crew from an old caravel carrying woolens and Bermundi rugs.

They shuffled at a snail’s pace, with plenty of stops for no reason anyone could discern.

Some twenty small steps along, Zimd poked Inda. She grinned, nosy as always. “What were you lookin’ at so intent, while we were coming in?” she asked in Iascan, though nobody from Khanerenth was around. But the atmosphere was tense.

Inda turned her way. “I was lookin’ at the bow crew on the navy schooner. What kind of bows they use. How they grouped.”

“Why?” Zimd asked.

Inda shrugged. “If we have to defend our ship, good to see what we might face. In tactics.”

“Tactics?” Zimd repeated. “What’s that?”

“I was about to ask myself,” Tau murmured.

Inda chewed his bottom lip, his wide-set light brown eyes doing that odd thing again, where he’d go blind for a breath or two. Then the line in front began shuffling again, and Leugre gave the rats hard shoves from behind, as if that would move the queue along any faster.

Inda fell silent. He never talked around Leugre or his friends. Jeje had figured out by summer’s end that he wasn’t stupid, and by winter—when he had noticed her and Yan struggling over their letters, while Indutsan and his mate ignored them—she had began to figure out that he wasn’t dull.

That is, he was dull enough on the outside, but something was going on inside him. She struggled to put to words what she sensed—but, coming from plain and outspoken people (what you saw was what you heard, like it or not) she failed.

She failed at understanding Tau, too.

She scowled down at her bare feet on the warped planks of the dock. Now that they were stuck on land, she could feel winter hadn’t quite let go, in the cold wind bringing a bank of low clouds overhead.

She was used to thinking of herself as quick and smart. That’s what her grandmother had said about her, when she first broached the idea of leaving the family fishers. In spite of Faura’s sneering, she was not the least bit ashamed of fishing. The problem? It was boring. She hadn’t wanted to spend a lifetime working her way up to a bigger boat, just to haul more fish, then dry it, then sell it. And then go out for more.

“Get aboard a good merchant,” her grandmother had said. “You’ll see the world, and every kind of trade. It’s a different sort of sailing, but you’re clever and you work hard. S’long as you stay away from the likes of kings, you’ll do fine.”

Well, it looked as if they’d sailed right into _something_ having to do with kings, Jeje thought grumpily. Or rather stepped into it.

Shuffle, shuffle. The planking gave way to sandy granite: they’d reached the quay.

Right then it began raining, and a lot of crossbow-carrying warriors shoved them past the harbormaster’s building—which looked like it had suffered a recent fire—and toward some huge warehouses.

The rain had begun in earnest by the time they crowded inside the cavernous space, which smelled like rotten vegetables. “Not a good sign,” Cook muttered. “Means they let a whole cargo sit and rot.”

“Probably while fightin’ each other,” Sails agreed. “I always said, Khanerenth is full o’chancy people. We do a lot better further south. But no one asks me.”

Jeje liked Sails, who was a fair taskmaster and a good teacher, but she thought privately that Sails was always very ready to offer her opinion, and did, whether anyone wanted it or not. Usually after the fact—and nobody liked hearing _I told you so_.

They stood there, most still holding their dunnage, heavy as it was. Jeje shifted hers from shoulder to shoulder, aware that she didn’t want to put it down. That would mean she expected to stay. Carrying it meant she hoped to soon be back on the ship. She knew this was stupid, but . . .When Tau gave another of those quiet sighs and swung his bag down to rest by his feet, Jeje surrendered and lowered hers, too.

A rustle of movement and a sharpening of voices caused everyone to turn to each other and ask what was going on, did you hear anything—which kept them from hearing until Tau, who had the sharpest ears of the rats—and spoke the best Sartoran—murmured, “Someone demanded manifests. Seems our cargo is being seized. Maybe the ship.”

“Seizing the _ship?_ ”

“What’s going to happen to us?”

Word propagated outward faster than a grass fire, leaving a profound silence, and people edging away as armed warriors moved among them.

Captain Beagar had brought his papers, and perforce had to surrender them.

When the warriors left him, he turned, found his crew, and came to them, as other captains went to theirs.

He held up his hand, and though they were now on land and he was no longer the supreme authority, habit was strong. This was the last vestige of order, of sense, in a world suddenly gone askew.

The _Pim Ryala_ ’s crew stood silent as he said, “I am told that they are searching for weapons and contraband, after which we shall be let go.”

Wily, grizzled Scalis said, “Capting, what d’they consider contraband?”

Indutsan, his balding head barely visible at the captain’s shoulder, looked so sour that it was clear he expected their entire cargo to turn up on their contraband list. His mood didn’t improve when another set of warriors came through, swords drawn, crossbows loaded, and began herding the prisoners through the warehouse.

Jeje stuck as close to her fellow rats as she could, noticing that they seemed to have the same idea. 

It was at first somewhat of a relief when they discovered they were more or less together, shoved into a makeshift barracks that must have once served as a storage room, with a row of high windows down one side. Someone had shoved three dilapidated bunks into it, and a double bunk. The rest was bare stone. The bunks were mostly slat, with lumpy straw mattresses that smelled like mold, as if they hadn’t been changed out for years.

Norsh promptly claimed the best of them, and Leugre the next best. Jeje moved to the opposite side of the room and put her stuff on the floor. At least it had been swept sometime in the past months. She’d slept on the floor at her cousins’ many times. This place wouldn’t be that different.

Faura loudly claimed two of the remaining bunks, one for her and one for her cousin, then moved to the third and sat down. “Tau?” she said, patting it.

Norsh swung around, eyes narrowed. His face reddened with fury when Tau pitched his dunnage in the corner opposite the bunks—which put him not two paces from Jeje.

“Tactics?” Tau turned to Inda, who’d been standing there, blinking.

Zimd gave a huge yawn. “If you can’t sail it, trade it, or eat it, then I don’t want to know. Let’s sleep!” She pitched her stuff on Jeje’s other side.

Inda put his things down beside Yan’s.

Tau sat down on his dunnage. “Inda, what are tactics?”

“Tactics is what you do to carry out a strategy,” Inda mumbled, then looked up. “It’s, um, carrying out orders. Like, the first mate tells you to step the new topgallant mast. Tactics is what the work party does to get it done.”

Jeje ignored this blabber, and scowled when she noticed that everyone with beds was part of Norsh’s gang, or wanted to be, and those on the floor were people Norsh hated or picked on. Jeje considered grabbing that bunk that Faura was sitting on—she’d only gone to the floor to be on the opposite side of the room from Norsh.

She thought about Faura’s prickly personality, her habit of borrowing things and not returning them, and decided she’d stay where she was.

Testhy entered, the last of them, and headed toward the empty bunk between where Faura sat and the one where she’d put her stuff.

Faura snapped, “That’s for Fass. You can have this one.”

She got up, crossed her arms, and stalked back to the bunk she’d claimed. Testhy dropped his stuff, then said, “Fass will be along. They’re questioning him.”

“Fass?” Faura asked, her irritation turning to worry. “Why?”

Testhy’s pale brows lifted and he spread his hands. “Why are they doing any of this?”

The door opened, and Fassun entered, stumbling as if he’d been shoved. He almost dropped his dunnage, but wrestled it up to his shoulder again, peered around in the gloom, then his expression eased when he spotted Faura.

“What’s going on?” Norsh asked.

Fassun sighed. “They seem to think we’re spies, or allied with their navy, or something like that. Captain Beagar managed to convince them to write to Lindeth and the Pims to prove the owner isn’t whatever they think.” He shrugged, and dropped his things on the empty bunk.

“Write to Lindeth? That’ll take months!” Norsh exclaimed.

“Years!” Zimd howled, fists on her hips.

“If they even do it,” Leugre muttered, then glared around looking for something to hit. His gaze lit on Yan. “What’re you staring at, dish face?”

Yan dropped his gaze. Inda said, “Yan, help me spread out my blankets? My wrist still hurts.”

Jeje watched how Leugre stared at Inda while Norsh pretended Inda didn’t exist. Yeah, she thought. Inda’s hand might hurt, but he still can beat you. But did his hand still hurt that bad?

Then it hit her: Inda had said that on purpose.

She slewed around and watched Inda and Yan work together to spread their stuff out, first Yan’s, then Inda’s. Tau was also watching, his profile hard for Jeje to read. Most of the time she couldn’t. He reminded her of a fire, cheery most of the time, but sometimes too hot.

Tau turned and with his customary care, began spreading out his things.

Faura copied him, as she often did, looking frequently over her shoulder in his direction. To see if he noticed, probably. Jeje wondered why she found that so annoying.

She didn’t like being annoyed, especially at people she had to live with. Norsh and Leugre were hopeless—they didn’t like anyone but themselves—but everyone else, she tried to get along with. _Shipmates are closer than family on those long voyages foreign_ , Jeje’s grandmother had warned her. _You get along, the days go by pretty good. You don’t get along, and it’s stormy seas and salt galls_.

They’d all settled (except Norsh, who seemed to think if he refused to unpack his dunnage, the Khanerenth authorities would soon free them) when the door opened. This time it was Kodl who entered, lugging a huge basket.

He looked around at them, set the basket down, then said in Iascan, “I’ve brought food—flatrolls stuffed with greens and grilled fish, melons, dark cheese, and a couple jugs of berry pressings. The captain paid for it, by the bye, and he will be quite angry if he finds out that everyone didn’t get their share. I’m also to tell you, anyone who makes trouble will be left behind, their back pay forfeited.”

Silence met this.

Kodl wiped his grimy light blond hair off his sweaty brow. “And that means trouble among you.” He looked straight at Leugre.

“Why you staring’t _me_ , First Mate?” Leugre sneered in Dock Talk.

“I wonder,” Kodl said shortly. “If you don’t like it here, you can bunk with Scalis. Plenty of room. In fact, the captain said, anyone who raises trouble among us—never mind the locals—will be put in with them.”

Silence.

“All right, then. The consort crews are being housed across the way. We’re better off than some, I can tell you. The guards will bring around water in the morning.” He turned to Testhy, and set the basket by his feet. “You’re the purser’s mate. Take charge of the galley.”

The moment he walked out, Leugre cast a glare at Norsh, who stood undecided. Leugre sneered at him, then walked up to Testhy, who had begun setting out the foods wrapped in cloths. He smacked Testhy on the side of the head.

“Hey!”

“I’ll take charge.”

Inda got up and said, “Kodl put Testhy in charge.” He stopped beside the big basket and gazed up at Leugre, a short figure but with the shoulders of someone Tau’s age.

Leugre sneered, “I thought your hand hurt.”

“It does,” Inda said. “But I’ll be fine.”

 _I’ll be fine._ Jeje remembered how Inda’s hand got hurt—and he won the fight despite it being broken. Then she noticed Tau’s flickering smile, and the way Norsh rubbed his thumb against his narrow jaw, looking away as though the moss-stained stone at the far corner held some secret message.

They were all remembering. Jeje was sure of it. Laughter bloomed inside her.

Leugre scowled down at Inda, then spat on the ground and sauntered away.

Fassun sighed as Testhy moved the basket away from the spit, and with Inda helping, finished the job of unloading the basket and then dividing things up.

And that’s the way it was the for next few days.

That night a crashing, roaring thunderstorm broke overhead, and for a while everyone joked about how nice it was to be under a roof instead of trying to reef the mainsail, but by the week’s end, and the third storm, it wasn’t so funny anymore.

Kodl, who arrived every other day, under guard, brought a greasy pack of cards. They played games of cards and shards, everyone using a button or some other small item from their dunnage as markers. For a time it was fun playing a huge game, but that, too, gradually palled, first Faura complained that Testhy was cheating, and why did everyone always deal her terrible cards, and how was she supposed to remember where her shards were. Then, Testhy always won because he was the fastest at numbers, which made Norsh nasty.

When the cards were put away, for a time they talked, everybody telling stories out of their past. Well, everyone but Inda and Yan, who sat and listened so quietly that only Tau, then Jeje, noticed them skipped over, Zimd and Faura talking enough for four people.

Jeje was telling another funny one about her outspoken grandmother—as Zimd giggled and Dasta looked less hangdog than usual—until Faura said with a tired sigh, “Jeje, if we have to hear about your grandmother one more time, I’m going to run out of here screaming for them to _shoot me_.”

Jeje stared at Faura, who lay on her bunk, eyes closed. She looked and sounded weary, except for the corrosive snap to her last two words.

Jeje’s neck heated, and she turned away, mechanically straightening her things. “Sorry. I didn’t think I was yawping too much.”

“Well you are.”

“No she isn’t,” Yan said in a soft voice.

“I like those stories,” Dasta murmured, even softer. “Though I wouldn’t want her gran mad at me.”

Faura didn’t react.

Yan was stitching a summer shirt, his head so bent all Jeje could see was his black hair. “Reminds me of home. A little. And your grandmother is funny.”

“I like them, too,” Tau added. He lay stretched out on his bunk, head resting on his hand.

Faura certainly heard _that_. She snorted, and turned her back on them all.

Tau said slowly, “I like hearing little stories about others’ lives because it takes me out of _here_.” He lifted a shoulder. “If only in my head.”

“I like them, too,” Inda said. He, too, was busy sewing a summer shirt.

Jeje was about to say, _How about we hear some of yours_ , but she hesitated. Then she wondered why she hesitated—she wasn’t given to thinking about such things. But in memory there was always that _look_ of Inda’s, the day soon after he was hired when she saw him staring at that bucket of fresh sponges. He’d looked like he’d been stabbed right in the heart. Well, not that she’d ever seen anybody stabbed in the heart—and didn’t want to, except maybe pirates. And she did want to see _that_. Well, hear about it after it happened, maybe. Anyway try as she might, she could not imagine what about sponges could cause that expression. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.

So she didn’t speak, and the moment passed.

But after that, she noticed things. Like how Inda readily took part when the card games started up again, and he took his turn in guessing what was going on outside. But when people reminisced, he just listened.

Yan was quiet all the time. Inda wasn’t—except when it came to his life before the _Pim Ryala_.

As the days stretched on, people got restless.

Three times Norsh tried to go after Tau. The first time, Leugre stopped him—and got a punch in the stomach for his pains, but then Leugre coldcocked Norsh when his back was turned, and the result was, everybody got a couple days of relative quiet.

The second time, it was night, and everyone had settled down to sleep. Some, like Zimd, slept already.

Norsh crept up behind Tau, who was pulling off his shirt, and tackled him. They rolled over the ground, messing up the floor-sleepers’ bunks, until they fetched up against Inda, who snapped a kick into the side of Norsh’s knee, eliciting a howl of pain.

Norsh fell off Tau and got to hands and knees. “I’ll kill you,” he snarled at Inda.

Inda didn’t answer. Just stood there, waiting.

Leugre snarled, “They’ll all yap when Kodl comes. Or do you want the guards hearing, and banging in here?”

Norsh flung himself away.

The next morning, Jeje woke up to soft, rhythmic breathing and the quiet rustle of cloth. In the dim light through the high, dirty windows. Inda was alone at the far end, moving through stretching exercises.

Tau and Yan promptly joined him. Zimd followed, laughing like it was a joke. Then Dasta, and some others. Jeje thought, why not? Especially when the jumping around turned into some fast tag games, and tumbling.

They kept it up until mealtime, and Jeje noticed she felt better than she had since they were locked up. Being still was making them crazy.

After that, it became a regular thing. Faura joined, usually standing next to Tau. Testhy did as well, and Fassun.

Everyone joined but Leugre and his followers, including Norsh.

A week or so passed, and gradually the running around turned into exercises, until the day that Leugre, bored and disgusted with everyone thumping and sweating through those pointless exercises, noticed Testhy half-hidden by some old, broken barrels, busily scrawling away on a slate.

Leugre flicked a look at Norsh, who lunged at Testhy and threw him up against a wall. “Whatcha got there?”

“Nothing,” Testhy yelped.

“Nothing? Nothing?” Norsh mimicked.

There was Inda, reminding Jeje of a pug dog her aunt had had. It was the smallest dog of the pack in Lindeth, but it didn’t know it was the smallest. Inda asserted himself the same way the pug did, only he wasn’t doing it over scraps or a wooden toy.

Tau appeared at Inda’s shoulder, silent, waiting, and Norsh dropped the slate deliberately. The ground was too dirty for it to break. He cursed them all, and said, “I’m bored.”

Inda picked up the slate and handed it to Testhy, who said in a low voice, “Kodl got it for me so I could practice my multiples. I won’t be able to pass my purser’s mate’s test in the guild until I can do multiples in my head. But I only do it afternoons, when everyone’s doing cards.” He scowled at Norsh. “Since they won’t let me play anymore.”

Inda whispered something to Testhy, who shrugged. “Sure. I don’t mind.”

Then Inda said, not looking at anybody, “Testhy says we could share the slate, if anyone wants to practice their letters.”

It was the way Inda didn’t look at anybody that warmed Jeje inside. She’d never thought of herself as ignorant until Fassun had said contemptuously one day, not long after her hire, “You _really_ can’t _read?”_

Tau took the slate and began drawing Sartoran letters, which got Faura interested—and within a day or so, they were passing the slate from hand to hand, or else practicing letters by finger drawing in the dust. Jeje was not the only one who had not learnt her letters. Dasta, child of beekeepers, was also learning.

After that, the days didn’t pass any faster, but somehow the time was less boring because they had set watches, with things to do in each: the stretches and tumbling, then the lessons in reading and numbers and Sartoran. Especially when the day came when Inda got Tau to dictate sentences from some plays he happened to have learned, and they began writing them in the dust, seeing who could make their letters fastest.

Until then, Jeje had never wanted siblings. She’d even congratulated herself on not having any when she overheard certain of her cousins squabbling shrilly on the old fisher. But as the weather began to change, one morning she woke up between Inda and Yan, and thought, _It’s like I got some brothers_.

She smiled.


	2. Jeje Discovers Loyalty

The newly-renamed _Cocodu_ sailed southward, the ship gradually recovering its handsome lines as its crew healed from storm and mutiny-caused wounds, and began repairs.

 _Vixen_ , fast even in light airs, sometimes scouted ahead, especially in those early days when everyone knew that one more fight would finish them. But gradually _Vixen_ took up station in _Cocodu_ ’s lee, leaving the wind for the larger ship.

At first Jeje relished a sense of things being right again, except as time went on, she was aware that she was trying to impose that sense.

“It _isn’t_ the way it was,” she grumped to Tau as they sat on the tender’s deck repairing a worn sail. Oh, it was so good to have him back, alive! But the best was how he always seemed to find her when he wanted to talk. “Every time I think it is, in come the differences to sting me, like . . . like flying nettles, or something. I don’t hear Nugget in the top, but at least I know she's at Freedom. I don’t see Kodl, and I won't. Worse, I will never see Yan again. I will never hear Zimd gossiping again. There are no fresh biscuits from Rig . . . oh, you know what I mean.”

She could see in his face that he knew, and that was another thing. She hadn’t been separated from Tau or Inda or Thog for all that long. Not compared to how long they’d sailed together so far. Yet except for Thog, who was the way she always had been, Inda and Tau seemed different. It wasn’t just Tau’s short hair always blowing in his eyes (and how she wanted to smooth it back for him—was it as silky as it looked?) and Inda having more scars. There was a . . . well, you might call it a haunted look to Inda’s fixed gaze, if you believed in ghosts. And Tau’s smile was different. There was pain in it, or sadness, or something like that, and the whole idea made her cringe.

She bent over the wind-and-weather-worn canvas, sewing with emphatic movements as she worked to beat back those thoughts.

Tau said, “I do know what you mean.” He tied off his end, then sat back, leaning on his elbows, the breeze stirring the few golden hairs over his breastbone in the open neck of his shirt. “If asked, I would never have volunteered to be taken by pirates, but we did get a ship of our own out of it.”

“What can be got can be taken the same way,” Jeje muttered.

Tau laughed. “You _are_ in a bad mood! Why?”

Jeje looked up, to see him waiting for an answer. That was the thing about Tau, he waited for your answer, and then he listened to it. How could you not love that about him? No. How could you not like that, appreciate that, respect that. Anything but the L-word.

She was done with the L-word, she reminded herself firmly. And to get her mind out of _that_ swamp, she muttered, “I guess I’m waiting for the next mutiny.”

“Mutiny!” Tau sat up straight. “Who?”

Jeje was suddenly aware of the new hands on deck, one up above, and the other at the tiller. She listened to the wind thrumming the sails, and wish-washing down the hull, aware that every sound on the tender could be heard easily. They were talking in coastal Iascan, but anyone might understand that. She didn’t know these new people, except that they had been pirates—and Inda had insisted on all the crew rotating between the ships, to cover for those still recovering from bad wounds.

She also loathed the kind of gossip that created more gossip. Talking about possible mutiny was absolutely sure to get mouths flapping.

“Who knows?” she said, shrugging tightly. “I guess I’m just crabby because I’m still having nightmares about the attack on our convoy, all mixed in with the one in which we took that rake-masted raffee over there. Which even a landrat can tell at a glance is obviously a pirate ship.”

Tau lifted his head, the wind ruffling his wheat-gold hair, and muttered, “True, definitely a predator, our _Cocodu_.”

Jeje hated the new name—hated any reminder of that horrible woman. Who had treated Tau as if she’d owned him. She had run her fingers through his hair. The evidence blew in short strands around his ears.

And Tau had whacked all his hair off.

Jeje squelched down the boiling feelings caused by that image, a habitual squelch by now. He was alive. Coco was gone. That was good enough.

Time passed. Her feelings for Tau stayed firmly squelched, but the original subject didn’t. If anything, the question in her mind sharpened when word passed through the marine fighters and the pirates (two distinct groups, in Jeje’s mind) that Inda deemed them recovered enough to resume drills.

And he had put that Fox in charge.

Fox issued his first order: everyone had to come to the foredeck, either morning or afternoon watch. Even Inda, though word was, he and Fox practiced alone, early in the mornings.

Thog had rotated over to crew for Jeje. The rest of _Vixen's_ crew had gone to the morning drill while Thog and Jeje and one of the ex-pirates Inda had sent over were on watch. The ex-pirate (or “ex-pirate”—Jeje was still unsure) had been excused from drill due to a wound on one knee and a bad slice across his back, so it was only Jeje and Thog who rowed over to _Cocodu_ that afternoon.

Jeje waited until they were midway between the two vessels before leaning forward and talking to her lap—as the shiprats had learned to do to escape Norsh or Leugre or their toadies overhearing. “Do you believe that Fox isn’t a pirate?”

“Not sure.” Thog’s huge, solemn eyes lifted to study Jeje’s face. “Do you think he will influence Inda?”

Jeje shifted from one haunch to the other, hating the gnawing anxiety she couldn’t talk herself out of. “I think he’ll try. I’m afraid he’ll try. I hate how Inda jabbers with them in that Marlovan of theirs. It’s not the lingo, so much as how _different_ he is with them. Not that I mind the rat-faced one so much. But . . . he acts like he trusts them, and he doesn’t even _know_ them.”

“I am told he met Fox once.” Thog let out a soft sigh. “They are from his homeland.”

“I know that,” Jeje whispered, trying to smother her impatience. With every stroke they neared the former pirate ship, and who knew how many nosers were watching them at this very moment? “I’m talking about whether—”

“You do not comprehend,” Thog cut in, just as low-voiced. “I believe he longs for his homeland.”

 _Like you do?_ Jeje thought, with a pang of regret. She wished she hadn’t brought up the subject with Thog, but how was she to know what secret hurts people had—and what would remind them of those hurts?

“I do not think the crew wishes to turn pirate, not all,” Thog went on, her gaze shifting over the kelp-veined, choppy waters.

“I agree. But what worries me is, will that Fox knife Inda in the back, so he can be captain and force us to turn pirate, or die. Walic all over again, from the stories I hear right and left.”

Thog’s lips parted, then her thin shoulders tightened. “I did not think of that.”

The shadow of the ship slid over them. They fell silent as they tied on, then clambered aboard. Jeje’s worry had sharpened, her gaze going straight to that dagger-lean figure in black lounging next to the weapons locker.

As Jeje moved to the back of the group forming on the foredeck, those narrowed eyes of his seemed to pick her out, though she did her best to hide behind Lorm’s huge bulk.

Fox called out warm-up cadences in a sharp voice of command, the rhythm faster than Inda’s had been up behind Lark. Jeje was soon sweating under the warm afternoon sun, then panting.

And that was when the drill really began. She was crowing for breath, and they still weren’t done, when she decided she’d had enough. She tossed down the wooden knives and leaned her sweaty, trembling hands on her knees as she tried to get enough air into her lungs.

A hand thumped her between the shoulder-blades, nearly knocking her over. She scowled up to find Fox right behind her. “Lazy? We can fix that,” he drawled.

Jeje snarled, “My fighting station is in the tops. I should be practicing shooting.” Using you as a target, she wanted to add. But managed not to.

Fox’s lip curled as if he’d heard the thought. “What if,” he said gently, “there is no hiding place in the tops? Are you going to tell your enemy, 'Oops, this isn't my station. Go attack someone else'?”

Inda said from the other side of the deck, “Jeje, we need to be ready for anything.”

Jeje caught sight of Thog beyond the foremast, her usually pale face crimson to the ears. Everyone was breathing hard, though not looking her way.

Jeje realized she was merely breathing fast now. That small break had recovered her enough to think _I’m not going to give this stinker the satisfaction_ , and she bent to pick up the practice blades, though it took about all the strength she had left.

Three more drills, then Fox said it was scrapping time—but at least that was in twos, with everyone else watching. And recovering. He beckoned Inda over with a lazy wave of his hand, and they gave a demonstration that threw Jeje back to that desperate hand-to-hand battle when Inda and his mutineers defeated the pirates who’d brought the spar from the island. She'd always thought Inda was about the best there could be, but she had to admit Fox was faster. Even if Inda always seemed to know where the next blow was coming, in that eerie way of his.

Everyone seemed quiet after that demonstration. “He wants us fighting like _that?_ ” Jeje muttered to Tau when at last they were dismissed at the end of day watch, as good smells eddied from the galley.

“So I’m told,” Tau murmured in a sardonic voice—that reminded Jeje, in that instant, of Fox.

She blinked at Tau, then came the weary thought that she was half-delirious from hunger and thirst.

The next practice was just as grueling. No, it was worse, because she went into it with every muscle screaming in agony from the previous drill. Drill! Torture session was more like it. But the evidence was right before her eyes that Fox did it three times a day—beginning his mornings with Inda.

Jeje watched one of those sessions through the spyglass from _Vixen_ ’s masthead. If anything, it was even tougher than the demonstration that first day.

So she gritted her teeth and endured—but she still didn’t trust Fox as far as she could spit into a wind.

* * *

They were about a week outside Freedom Harbor when Jeje began to finish the drill sessions without feeling totally destroyed. Once in a while she even landed a hit. Always on the worst fighters, but heya, it was improvement. Meanwhile Tau was also improving, but somehow every time he scrapped with that Fox, he seemed to appear with new bruises smudging his visible skin.

Jeje ground her teeth, seeing those. She finally burst out after she could no longer believe it accidental, “That Fox is a horseapple.” She indicated a mark on Tau’s cheekbone.

Tau lifted a shoulder. “I should have blocked it.”

“He has so little control he has to hit you that hard?”

Tau smiled faintly. “I hit just as hard. If I land one. And I can always get better at it, if we’re going to fight pirates.”

She studied his eyes, his smile, and realized in that moment he looked unsettlingly like Fox, except much, much nicer. And better looking. But she couldn’t see a hint of his thoughts.

Whatever was going on there, it was clear he wasn’t going to talk about it. All right. If Tau said nothing, she was determined to say nothing.

At least she had one comfort: nobody could shoot faster or more accurately than her or Thog. She took secret pleasure in peppering the side of _Cocodu_.

One gray, cloudy morning when sky and sea blended into a dreary uniformity, and the winds were so still that _Cocodu_ rocked slowly on the current, Mutt appeared in the door to her cabin, eyes wide behind his shaggy mat of hair. “It’s him! Rowing over!” he croaked hoarsely, one hand motioning violently aft.

“Him? Who?”

_“Him!”_

There could only be one ‘him’ spoken in that tone of half-horror, half-thrill. Jeje was on deck in three steps, to see Fox rowing over alone.

A short time later he climbed aboard, wearing black as usual, even to his fringed headscarf. Somehow he always seemed taller when he was right beside you.

He looked around, mocking smile not quite hiding the slow gaze of appreciation, and, stung, she burst out, “If you’re thinking of trying to take _Vixen_ away, think again.” Then bit her lip. Of course she didn’t own the tender.

But then the question struck her, who does, really?

He stood there, long fingers propped loosely on his narrow hips, gazing down at her with mordant amusement. “Laying claim to the tender, eh?”

She said truculently, “Belongs to our marine fighters.” Making it clear that he wasn’t one of them.

His mocking smile deepened the corners of his mouth to dimples, surprising her with a twitch of attraction—but that, she knew within a heartbeat, was only due to that odd similarity to Tau that she couldn’t quite explain. As for the rest of him, he might be easy on the eyes, but she would rather climb into bed with a cactus. They were handsome too.

“And now you’re thinking of warning me against claiming ownership?” He tipped his sharp-cut chin toward _Cocodu_. “Worry not, Jeje sa Jeje,” he switched suddenly to flawless coastal Iascan. “Inda is known and welcome in Freedom. It would be a fool’s errand to mess with that. We’ll join the alliance with him listed as owner-captain, all nice and legal.” Once again that insolent smile. “When I trouble to take a ship of my own, it won’t be that raffee.”

“Then why are you here?” she asked bluntly, the _Because I sure didn’t invite you_ hanging in the air.

His faint smile widened briefly. “To assess your defenses. Let’s run a drill.”

And he did, leaving them all feeling like unstrung puppets, as usual. And when he was done, instead of leaving, he fired his own verbal arrows in the form of questions about how she handled the tender during battles. She got more and more short with her answers, especially when he questioned her closely about signals and her decisions to move, and why, between signals, until—abruptly—he said, “That’s enough. Once we reach Freedom Harbor, Barend will no doubt have you running maneuvers inside the bay and outside.”

“Barend?”

Fox’s sardonic smile was back. “The one you heard called Rat. He’ll be sailing master.”

“Why?” she burst out.

He had begun to pivot toward the rail—to drop into his boat, she realized belatedly. She wished she could bite back the word.

But she couldn’t. He turned back, those green eyes wide. “Why what?”

She’d begun. She might as well get it out there. As her grandmother said, stewing was only good for vegetables. “Why you two. In charge.”

His eyes widened even more. “You don’t think we’re good enough?”

She twisted mentally, trying to catch one of the many emotion-driven thoughts zipping around her head, and finally snorted. “We could be just as good. Or better.”

“Who is this ‘we’?” He spread his long hands over his chest. “Barend and I, I gather, are not part of it? Or does your implied division mark off those forced by Walic into piracy?”

She flushed at the bite in his voice. “You Marlovans. Inda seems to favor you, for some reason. Though I don’t get the impression they treated him all that well.”

Fox’s lip curled, and she braced for annihilating scorn. But Fox gazed out to sea, the silky black fringes of his fighting scarf tangling with his long hair, then looked back, one hand on the rail. “I’m beginning to wonder if Inda’s remarkable penchant for inspiring loyalty is due in part to his seeing the best in people.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, but vaulted lightly over the rail into his boat. And with three powerful strokes, sent it skimming back toward the raffee.

Ouch, Jeje thought.

Thog drifted up to Jeje’s shoulder, massaging her right arm. Together they watched Fox go, then Thog said, “I did not think he was aware of the immaterials. Such as loyalty.”

“I think . . .” Jeje began, then sighed sharply. “I don’t know what I think.”

She turned away to order the rest of the tender’s crew to clear the deck, when she stopped, listening. Was that laughter on the wind?


	3. Jeje Discovers the Cost of Victory

At some point, Jeje would have to sleep, but she knew she would only dream of that horrible rip between sea and sky, and the screaming pirates being swept off to Nightland.

So she kept dunking the collection of arrows that Mutt had been dumping onto the _Vixen_ ’s foredeck, cleaning gore, leddas oil, and splinters from them.

Her body ached in every bone and joint, a throbbing red dullness brightened by the glare-yellow jags of pain from at least six wounds. But Viac had wrapped those for her, and as for sleep, she was afraid the moment she shut her eyes she would relive all the horrors of that long battle.

She drank down the scalding steep that Mutt thrust into her hands. She didn’t ask how or where he’d gotten it. Her attention snagged on his worried eyes and the thin line of his mouth, but she knew what he worried about—they all worried as slowly, slowly the floating, burning detritus on the waters resolved into ships, and names.

The sound of hammering and splashing from the _Cocodu_ on the _Vixen_ ’s weather rail halted abruptly.

Jeje paused in the act of setting an arrow in the ‘repair’ pile as someone up on _Cocodu_ yelled, “Hail the boat!”

“ _Silverkit_ scout attached _Silverdog_ ,” cawed a woman, hoarse after a night of battle.

Jeje lowered her head, a pang shooting through her temples as she tossed the arrow down. Scouts had been arriving and departing since dawn. But then a clamor of voices rose. Among them she made out, “Tau!” “Taumad!”

Jeje shot to her feet. Then she forced herself to remain where she was. As the water beneath _Vixen_ rippled from intersecting wakes, rocking the tender madly, she plumped down abruptly. The last thing they needed aboard the _Cocodu_ was another person hooting questions.

Besides, she knew that Tau would see _Vixen_ ’s rigging from the deck, and if he was able to speak . . .

 _Don’t think that way_. She forced herself to pick up another arrow, dunk it, drop it. Grab, dunk, drop.

She’d counted twenty of those, and had gritted her teeth so hard her jaw twinged when once again the _Vixen_ rocked hard. Then came Dasta’s familiar voice, “Jeje! Mutt!”

“Where’s Nugget?” Mutt screamed, his voice cracking. “Where’s Nugget?”

Jeje winced as Dasta’s voice roughened. “Tau says he saw her last curled in a ball, one side of her dark with blood, but she was still alive.”

“How alive? Where is she? Is she there?”

“She’s not with us—“”

_“What? Why?”_

“Mutt!” Jeje called. “Let him finish!”

Dasta looked away, then back again. “Hot fighting around them. But he fended them off. Handed her down into a pinnace with the other badly injured. Told them to go to shore.” Dasta’s voice broke on the last word.

Mutt howled, and Jeje gave up being disciplined. “Where?” she bellowed. “We’ll head there right now! Where’s Tau?”

Dasta had turned away. Gillor appeared at the rail, black hair flagging in the wind. “Tau went with the _Silverkit_ to chase the pinnace—Inda gave him gold.”

Gillor’s tired voice cooled Jeje.

 _Discipline._ Everyone was beyond exhausted, hurt, angry, full of questions. She forced herself to move aft, her knees like jelly at every step.

Mutt stood at the tiller, skinny arms wrapped around himself, face distraught.

“Mutt, you know Tau will come to us as soon as he’s back.”

Mutt’s head turned sharply, and he let out his breath in a rush. “Yes. He will. He will.”

He helped Jeje get new sails up for when orders finally came down from Inda. Then they scrubbed down the deck, and finally, as the sun kept playing hide and find with the bands of straggling clouds as it slowly dipped lower, other scouts, longboats, and a cutter sailed up to pass news to Inda.

Jeje had watched for Inda through the long day, but those glimpses had become increasingly rare, until she had no idea if he was even on board. She kept herself, Viac, and Mutt busy clearing the worst of the damage and repairing their sails so they’d be ready to sail when the tide shifted; after the Chwahir sailed away southward through the Narrows, Barend vanished, stumbling, below—asleep or unconscious. Jeje refused to disturb him.

After a long, weary interval they sat on deck together to tackle the pile of damaged arrows, each with a sack of new feathers at their side.

And then, when the lowering sun lit the western horizon with a lurid glow, the shadows of their masts lengthening over the darkening waters, the _Silverkit_ returned, luffing up on _Cocodu_ ’s weather side, as _Vixen_ still rode in its lee.

“I can’t stand it,” Mutt yelled, throwing down his tools.

Before Jeje could do more than yell, “Wait,” he’d swarmed to the masthead, secured a rope, and swung over to _Cocodu_ ’s deck, dropping out of sight.

Viac remained where he was, face closed, filthy, tangled hair straggling over his shoulders. The Fisher brothers were not what Jeje ever thought of as good company—they didn’t communicate much with anyone outside of each other—but they were steady and loyal, and she could imagine how worried Viac was about Loos, lying with the seriously wounded on the ship.

His callused hands worked solidly at the task of refletching arrows in Inda’s tight spiral—and Jeje forced herself to keep pace with him. It wasn’t as if she had family to worry about. Well, yes and no . . . she knew that her tough pack of grannies, aunts, and squabbling cousins would be fine if anyone would. She felt differently about the few remaining members of the _Pym Ryala_.

Then she heard Mutt give a sobbing screech of grief and rage, and her fingers jerked, her knife cutting painfully into the webbing between thumb and forefinger.

She dropped the knife, clasped the hand against her, and shut her eyes. So the first sign that they’d been joined was the soft thud of feet on the deck not far away.

She opened her eyes—and all her nerves flared hot and cold when she recognized Tau in that grimy figure, a basket over one arm.

“Is she dead?”

“No.” Tau flicked up tired eyes. “But she’s still on shore—I couldn’t get her.”

Jeje let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as Tau stopped by Viac, reaching into the basket. He said, “Dasta has been sitting with Loos as much as he can. Says he’s stopped bleeding. Galley put up hot food, and Inda’s orders are to eat now, before the tide shifts.”

Jeje had not realized she hadn’t eaten all day until that moment. As Viac took the napkin-wrapped food, bobbing a wordless thanks, Tau gathered Jeje with a glance, and the two stepped into her tiny cabin.

Even filthy and sweaty, wrapped with as many brown-blotched, streaky bandages as she wore, Tau could not be anything but graceful. She noted it, and was pleased at how disengaged her thoughts were. That internal battle had long been won. She had no wish to fight it again.

Tau set the basket down on the tiny table, and said, “Eat up. Barend’s share is under yours. Where is he?”

Jeje jerked a thumb over her shoulder, then said, “I don’t want to wake him. I’m afraid I might say what I think about this ring and pirate _idiocy_. Is he really going off just to get himself killed by Inda’s dad?”

“What exactly happened?”

Jeje repeated the constrained conversation between Inda and Barend, down to the _Go and be well_.

Tau shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. It sounds as if those last words will work as a signal to Inda’s family. They can’t be all idiots, or they wouldn’t have produced Inda, right?”

“I don’t know,” Jeje said crossly, angry all over again. “I don’t know why he can’t go home again, since he obviously wants to.”

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Barend’s business. That’s the older generation, and honor seems to require them to report what they know.”

“Honor,” she repeated in a thick voice, as if it were a curse word.

Tau gave her a pained smile. “Jeje, why are you fighting pirates?”

“Because I know how. Because if they’re fighting me, they aren’t killing a lot of helpless people. Because I like the loot,” she added heatedly, and watched Tau’s smile twist skeptically.

“Yes, I can see how debauched you live,” he commented, glancing around the clean, spare cabin.

“That’s because I can’t fit a giant bed in here, or a hundred silken pillows,” she retorted. “Tau, Marlovan honor makes _no sense_. You will never convince me that it does, so don’t even try.”

“I’m too tired to try,” he said, his voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “Jeje, I failed. Utterly. What is it about command that I cannot seem to grasp that comes so easily to Inda?”

“I don’t think anything comes easily to Inda. Not any more.” Jeje shook her head. “Not after this morning, when that Ramis came at us and Inda just stood there.”

Tau said, “I couldn’t see the _Knife_ —all we made out was that hole to damnation. What happened?”

“We were caught, right there. Couldn’t run. Couldn’t hide. If that man wanted to shoot us all, we would have been target practice without his breaking much of a sweat. Inda could scarcely hold a sword—you know how his arm gets at the end of a long battle.”

“None better. I suppose I’ll be working on it all the way north. At least that much I can do.”

“What happened at your end?”

Tau leaned his forehead on his hands. “Jeje, Inda sent me after the pinnace because he thought if anyone could finesse the shore people, I could. But I was useless—I might as well have been talking in Venn, for all they heeded me. Kept shouting that they’d kill us if we landed. Nothing I said mattered. I finally had to throw Inda’s gold onto the beach. I have no idea if it’ll do any good for our wounded. Nugget among them, I am sorry to say. They wouldn’t even let me see her. We had to row back empty-handed.”

“That’s not command,” she said. “It’s . . . persuasion.”

“Isn’t persuasion a form of command? Inda persuaded us to mutiny by saying 'do this' and we all did it. He then persuaded us to take on Boruin and Majarian. And then he persuaded us to take on the Brotherhood. And we followed!” Tau exclaimed, raising his hands, then he let them drop. “What’s next, taking on the Venn?”

“He’s not that stupid,” Jeje said—though not with thorough conviction. Surely he wasn’t? _Don’t worry about the madness you can’t help. There’s enough to deal with right in front of you._ “Anyway, from what he was saying this morning, it was almost as if he thought he failed, as I said. Also, once we came out of the Narrows, he was commanding less and less, until he was just looking for the nearest fight to join. We were all doing that.” She tapped her chest and flung her hands out. “Right down to fighting triads on pirate decks. I was watching. I had to watch, in case there were orders for me to take.”

“Then you probably kept track of the battle better than anyone else."

"Except maybe Fox," she muttered. 

She'd been watching him, too. As much as she could.

"Except for Fox," Tau repeated in the wry voice that he always used when Fox came up, either as a subject or in person. "But military questions can wait.” He leaned back, clearly exhausted. The lamp light sharply outlined his cheekbones and jaw line, making him almost look old. He’d be exactly as beautiful as an old man.

He said, “The point is, I failed today at a very small bit of persuasion. I had neither authority nor influence with people who speak the same language as I—who grew up not far from where I did. But as far as they were concerned, no matter what I said, there was no material difference between us and Marshig.”

“They’re scared.” Jeje shrugged. “Marshig’s been ravaging the coast. They probably think we’re next.”

“Yes. And fright can beget anger—and the moral high ground can be so dangerous when reinforced by rage,” Tau murmured. “What if they decide our wounded are pirates, better off dead?”

“Nugget’s a little girl!”

“They might point out that little girls grow up into Boruin, and it’s their _duty_ to kill them all.”

Jeje had uncovered her baked pie. She could smell the onion, cheese, tomato, and herbs—but Tau’s words choked off her appetite, and she said fiercely, “Don’t borrow trouble. We’ve had enough of our own, haven’t we?”

Tau wiped his hands down his face. “The truth is,” he whispered, “we won, but I feel sick at heart. So much death . . .” He blinked. “I’m whining. You’re right. Better us than the locals. Even if they think we’re pirates. Time will prove we aren’t, when they get their lives back.”

“Exactly.” She tried to sound firm.

Then both sensed the shift in sea and air.

“The tide is turning,” Tau said. “I’d better get on board _Cocodu_. The way I see it is, I have a week, maybe two, to talk Inda out of sailing to Ghost Island. _Anywhere_ else in the world but Ghost Island.”

“I so agree,” she said fervently.

Then Tau did something he never had before—he reached forward, and crushed Jeje in a fast, hard hug. Then he let go, and before she could sat anything, he vaulted gracefully up the hatch, his short, tangled hair swinging about his ears, and was gone.

Jeje sat where she was until the impact of him against her had faded into the battle aches, then she forced herself to her feet. Grabbing up the pie, she marched on deck, saying, “Mutt! Viac!”

Mutt was back, ready with Viac to set the sail.

Barend reappeared, looking groggy.

Jeje moved to the tiller, leaning into it with her hip and one hand as she said, “Food in the basket.”

Barend opened his hand, and she wondered if he’d been awake—what he’d heard. _Probably everything_. Well, maybe she’d given him something to think about, and if he had any sense, he’d help them convince Inda to return to Freedom, and a life that made sense, once they’d refitted at Lindeth.


	4. Jeje Discovers Need

As far as Jeje was concerned, all kings were stinkers.

But even she acknowledged that some were worse than others, and this king friend of Inda’s had made it plain over that long dinner that he’d missed Inda all those years while Inda was on the sea.

What’s more, it wasn’t _his_ fault Inda had been placed among the rest of them on the _Pim Ryala_. Just the opposite. From a couple of hints he let fall, he had been bitter when Inda vanished from the Marlovan kingdom, and he plainly regarded Inda’s sea exile as evil as it was undeserved.

That was kind of unfair—the evil part. (If you didn’t count Walic and the pirates.) But Jeje had no quarrel with the friendship behind the sentiment.

If. You could trust the friendship of kings.

Inda plainly did. Jeje had once thought Inda was incapable of laughter, until he set foot on the soil of his homeland. She had never seen Inda so happy, even while talking about the prospect of taking battle to the Venn, the toughest fighters on the seas. But nobody in this gigantic castle seemed to question any of that.

Jeje sat in the room she’d been given, unable to sleep, and feeling abandoned again, as everybody else had things to do. She had nothing to do but think, and think she did. Like about how Inda, in making his fellow rats into marine defenders, had tried to make them into _these_ people. It seemed that battle was their natural state. It was so odd to think about that because Inda was the least aggressive person Jeje knew—until you got him on a pirate’s deck, that is. Then even Fox wasn’t as hard a fighter, though he certainly came closest.

The point was, there was no remote chance that Inda had to defend himself against this king, or any of his sword-swinging Marlovans, who all seemed to welcome him, and even admire him. Inda was in no danger.

Jeje mulled the obvious conclusion: she had no real purpose here.

In fact, she’d acted like the worst poke-nose or busybody, in insisting she come along with Inda. This inescapable truth made her grimace, and go out again to wander the halls, as if she could escape it.

Nope.

It came right along with her, as firmly attached to her heels as her leaping, twitching shadow in the torchlight.

Everywhere she looked, she encountered people frantically busy doing something. She dodged strings of blue-coated people toting baskets and bundles. She dodged armed women striding about the walls.

It was a relief when she spotted someone she knew, the tall, kindly-faced one who was apparently supposed to marry Inda someday, if she’d heard that right. What an odd idea, Inda married! Jeje doubted _that_ would ever happen. Though she had to admit if it were to come to pass, he could scarcely pick anyone nicer in this whole castle full of confusion.

“Are you really going to marry Inda?” Jeje asked.

Tdor looked thoughtful, then sober. “I don’t know,” she said, and made brief reference to the north—and that battle again.

Jeje didn’t even want to think about battle with the Venn. It was too far beyond her experience. Pirates on the seas, that she could handle. Venn? No.

It was a relief when Tdor invited Jeje to her own chamber—at least, she wasn’t being shuffled off like unwanted dunnage—and then shifted the subject to Tau.

Jeje hid the impulse to laugh. Inevitable that Tau would be brought up. Did Tdor want a tumble, too?

Jeje explained Tau’s background—as much as she knew he didn’t mind people knowing—but then, instead of asking if he were heart-free, or making remarks about how attractive he was, and how many lovers he must have, Tdor looked thoughtful, and then took Jeje completely by surprise by raising her hands as if to ward off the suggestion that Jeje could introduce them.

“He reminds me of someone I grew up with,” Tdor said, after a couple of polite compliments, her tone apologetic. Jeje might have laughed, if Tdor hadn’t sounded so sincere.

Then Tdor surprised Jeje again. “I wondered if the resemblance was in their, oh, refined looks.” Tdor tipped her head, her serious gaze going distant. “If that kind of beauty creates similarity in features?” She gave Jeje a winsome, lopsided smile. “Does that sound foolish?”

Jeje had nothing else to do, and this was interesting. Jeje had fought private battles concerning Tau’s beauty, and won. And recently—unexpectedly— _gloriously_ , she’d won again.

She curled up on her cushion. “Tell me more.”

Tdor gestured, her wide sleeve briefly revealing the knife strapped to her wrist. Jeje found herself distracted by the Marlovan women’s knives. “There is little to tell,” Tdor said. “I’m afraid I might be boring, talking about my family at Tenthan, people you have not met.”

“No, I’m interested. Inda never said anything, ever, about his family.” When Jeje saw the quick contraction of Tdor’s brows in a hurt look, she added quickly, “He never talked much about _anything_. I think now . . . well, I think he missed his home too much.” She remembered Inda’s anguish when he saw that bucket of red sponges, and added more firmly, “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“ _That_ sounds like Inda.” Tdor’s expression cleared. “But I’ll try not to be boring. It’s just that, when Inda’s older brother was alive, he was to marry Joret Dei, who was—along with me—fostered at Tenthan, so that when we all grew up, we’d marry. Joret was really beautiful. I mean, really. From the day she was born. She hated being stared at, but people couldn’t help it, she was that beautiful.”

Jeje said, “Oh, I can believe it. I think it was the same for Tau. He used to get into fights when some people got too grabby.”

Tdor gave her a pained smile. “Joret didn’t fight. I think now we all wish that she had taken her knife to the Sierlaef, the, uh, in Sartoran you’d call him the crown prince. Because he nearly threw the country into civil war by chasing Joret around in order to get her to change her mind . . . but . . . well, he’s gone, and that’s all in the past.”

Jeje whistled softly, certain things she’d overheard at the Marlo-Vayir castle now made more sense.

Tdor said, “Her aunt Joret, for whom she was named, was every bit as beautiful—moreover, Shendan and Mran, two of my friends, have heard that the Dei family tends to have more than its share of really beautiful children. Mran says her family records also say they have more than their share of wild histories.”

Jeje smothered a laugh, thinking that ‘wild histories’ coming from a Marlovan was pretty rich. _All_ their history seemed to be pretty wild.

Tdor went on in a contrite tone. “I guess it’s stupid to think that all people that lovely to look at have to be related. Tau isn’t even dark-haired like Joret. She has blue eyes, oh, the color of a summer sky. But something about the way their hands are shaped, and their eyebrows, and here . . .” Tdor touched her jawline. “I wondered if that might be a shared trait among people like them, that has nothing to do with families, and more how we see beauty.”

Jeje had been all ready to agree, but she remembered that elusive woman at the Parayid pleasure house all those years ago, and what she’d overhead about names. Was it possible that Tau might be a long-lost cousin, or something?

How would you even go about finding out?

Go to Parayid, of course. Though Tau’s mother’s pleasure house was gone, nobody had said they were all dead. She could ask around, one person at a time. The same way that Jeje and Tau had investigated in Bren. He’d gone straight to the top, but Jeje had discovered she could do just as well by talking to ordinary people who might have sold bread, or carried messages, or had a cousin who cooked for Sarias the Butterfly.

When a Runner appeared to ask Tdor something, Jeje slipped away, returned to her room, and slept fitfully—constantly wakened by the echoes of Marlovan voices, horse hooves, and other unfamiliar noise—until the bells rang, rousing the entire city.

Not long after, she found herself jostled amid the massive cavalcade that set out from the huge courtyard below the royal residence. Inda had a place, with his king friend.

Tau had a place. Two people didn’t have places: two women, Inda’s dag Signi, who was surrounded by burly Marlovan guards, and Jeje herself.

* * *

It took her two days to see that she was never going to find a place among the Marlovans. If they’d been nasty, she would have stuck to Inda to spite them, but encountered singly, they expressed bewilderment, even unease. They didn’t hate her or even despise her. They just didn’t know what to do with her.

Well, she could understand that. If some well-meaning land person had come aboard _Vixen_ and was constantly underfoot, she wouldn’t know what to do with them either.

She could practice knife fighting in the mornings with Tau—which gave her great pleasure, and she could see he loved it, too. But he could do that with Inda.

_Tau . . ._

It wasn’t until midway through the second night, after watching Tau going hither and yon on errands, that it occurred to her that he’d made a place for himself. No, that wasn’t quite right. He’d been able to make a place for himself, because there was, oh, an empty spot that could be filled by a fellow wearing a blue coat and acting like one of their Runners.

Tau needed to be needed, she knew that. But what about Tau’s needs?

Her half-shut eyes opened wide.

Sleep fled.

She sat up in the total darkness of the stuffy tent. What did _Tau_ need? Anyone looking at him would think he had everything he wanted. He was certainly capable of getting it. But Jeje had seen his face when they glimpsed the fire damage at Parayid—his mother’s pleasure house burned to the ground.

Tau was here because Inda needed him, and Tau had a place among these Marlovans, who thought him a runner, tending Inda’s needs.

Fine.

Jeje was free to do whatever she wanted. And what she wanted right now was to help Tau in a way that he hadn’t expressed to anyone, but she sensed it was there in what he didn’t say, his reflective silences, the way his voice dropped to a low, husky note whenever he talked about Parayid.

He wasn’t free, because he was needed, but she was free, because right now she wasn’t needed. So she could use that freedom, wherever it led, however long it took.

She would find Tau’s mother for him.


	5. Jeje Discovers Family (and Fame)

The poet she only knew as Robin ended up on board _Vixen_ as the result of a sudden squall sweeping down the strait.

It was not two days after she and her fleet had stopped at Bren for supplies. Pilvig, her second-in-command on the _Vixen_ , had been relating some dockside gossip about a gorgeous yacht and the royal owner’s finicky demands when the storm clouds billowed up on the western horizon and tore eastward. _Vixen_ loved this kind of wind, and with the small crew tending sail and tiller with every nerve and muscle, the scout skimmed lightly over the waves in the midst of the storm.

It was nearly dark with the youngster at the masthead shouted, “Ship ahead! Right off the bow!” And then, after another band of nearly horizontal rain swept over them and past, on a higher note, “Raffee closing in on it from the west—I think they’re a _pirate_.” The word pirate was a shrill screech.

Pilvig shouted to Jeje, “Signal?”

By now, that was a formality. In fact, by the time the sodden ship rat had hoisted the equally sodden signal flags, Jeje’s three schooners and a big brigantine had already stripped to fighting sail.

The pirates had kept the most cursory watch, they were so confident about snapping up their handsomely decorated prey, a lone yacht. So they were gratifyingly taken by surprise by Jeje’s schooners appearing out of the storm as if by magic, a huge brigantine looming directly on their stern.

The fight, Jeje thought in disgust, could scarcely be termed that. She had new hands on board, and had been hoping for a tight little battle to shift their drill into real practice. But the pirates turned tail as soon as they could, and slunk away in the midst of the last wave of rain, leaving their prey pitching on the water, its beautiful scrollwork pin-cushioned with arrows.

When the excited signal rat reported in his squeaky adolescent voice that the owner of said yacht was no less than a Colendi princess, Jeje retired to her cabin, uninterested in the bother of etiquette that royalty would surely expect. Before the storm had brewed up, her cook—one of Lorm’s apprentices—had been preparing supper, and she was starved.

So she was surprised to hear the thumps and rattles of a boat bumping up against the _Vixen_ and tying on a short time later. No princess would ever come to _her_ —those royals all expected you to go to them—so who could it be?

She popped out onto the deck to discover a tall, thin man with an impressive hawk nose, and ears sticking out of wet curls of light hair. He bowed with a grace that reminded Jeje of Tau—now somewhere in Sartor, she believed, missing him with the usual gut punch right to the heart—and offered something in a covered basket.

“Her highness,” he said in accented, singsong Sartoran, “desired me to convey her gratitude, and to offer these fine Gyrnian wines as a token of her appreciation.”

Jeje shrugged off the palaver, but she wasn’t going to turn down good wine, especially blues from Gyrn, which she knew were very expensive. She took the basket, and as the fellow showed no signs of departing, she sighed. “We’re about to have our meal. Join us?”

The man’s whole demeanor brightened, and he bowed. By then, the _Vixen_ ’s small crew had finished bowsing everything up, and so they crowded below—except for the single person on watch.

Jeje felt obliged to uncork one of the bottles. The wine wasn't true blue, more deep purple, crisp, mellow, and slid down so easily that everyone’s mood lifted . . . and, encouraged by their visitor, who introduced himself simply as Robin, they talked about this small battle—real battles—and from there, it came out that Robin had met up with no less than the famed Fox Fleet. He instantly demanded all their stories.

When she was in Freedom, with Tau and what was left of _Cocodu_ ’s original crew, Jeje sometimes got in the mood to reminisce, but when Tau had been away on his mysterious missions for months, she didn’t like thinking of those long gone days. Though she knew that Inda was now as happy as his friends could wish for—and Fox was, well, Fox, so who knew what he was thinking—those old memories weren’t always happy.

However not everyone felt that way. There were those who loved nothing more than a good bragging session, Pilvig among them. Jeje left them to it and stayed in her cabin, going over the latest chart she’d bought from the guild.

Up on deck, Robin elicited stories from the wine-lubricated crew about the Fox Fleet’s latest battles, commanded by king-hating, pirate-smiting Jeje.

* * *

Three months later, as autumn winds whirled the leaves off the trees and out at sea, restless gray waves chopping white-crested all the way to the horizon, Jeje and her fleet pulled into Freeport Harbor to hole up for the winter where they would repair worn sails and spars, and train new hires.

And Tau was there, waiting.

By then Jeje had not seen Tau for a year. She had missed him so badly—and he her—that afterward neither of them remembered whose idea it was to have a child.

They went at the project with such enthusiasm that Jeje only had to chew gerda a couple of weeks before she missed her moontime.

Meanwhile, though the hammock dancing was always wonderful, for both of them the sharpness of separation had faded, and restlessness set in, as it always would. She knew he would soon set sail, and ordinarily she would leave first, but not this year: though plenty of women sailed and gave birth on the seas, that was on roomier vessels. She didn’t have to squash self and a squalling infant into _Vixen_ when she had a perfectly good place to stay in Freedom, and plenty of helping hands, as she had an idea she wouldn’t be all that great with infant care.

Sure enough, Tau vanished at New Year’s upon receiving an urgent request from Taz Enja of Sarendan to help with a dicey diplomatic affair with Colend. Jeje found it interesting to stay behind for once, and enjoy warm rooms that didn’t toss on high waves.

By the time winter’s last storms passed, she was uncomfortable enough to decide to stay the year—and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t plenty to do as Harbormaster.

At first, Jeje made a virtue of vaulting up and down the stairs of the octagon, but in those last weeks, she was so uncomfortable she moved in with Dasta, who had begged her to do so from the start.

Jeje had never given in, preferring to swing a hammock in the map room of the octagon, because she hated the idea of taking advantage of Dasta’s generous nature. But now that she was carrying a boulder in front, it seemed expedient. To her vast surprise, Dasta acted like she’d granted him a favor, and busy as he was, he made it his business to see to her comfort.

Further, he seemed happy to do it.

Until that spring, no one had considered how much grief Dasta hid when he saw the fleet sail out. When spring warmed the air, he and Jeje watched the Fox Fleet sail proudly out of the harbor, sails filled. Jeje stood by Dasta’s wheelchair. She had to look away from the light-spangled water and the sweet curve of _Vixen_ ’s sail retreating, so she saw in his face her own regret and longing, but those lines in his face were so strong she knew they had been carved by time.

Her eyes stung. Dasta never complained or asked for anything. She knew that the next spring, she could be on _Vixen_ as usual, but he never would captain _Cocodu_ again. It was Dasta himself who had refused, saying, “Our reputation is for fighting captains on fighting fleets. I’d be useless in a storm.”

Dasta had never grumbled, except about stupid things like the heat (in the old days, he was never cold), so she’d assumed he had adjusted to his life off the waters. After all, he was popular, and owned the best tavern in Freeport, which he had made into a successful inn. Everybody always came to Dasta’s first, and there was no news worth knowing that didn’t reach his ears before anyone else’s.

She wasn’t certain what to say, as he hadn’t complained, and she’d never been any good at insight or sympathy. That had always been Tau’s job.

So she said nothing, and as spring ripened into summer, Tau returned aboard a handsome yacht in time for the birth of his son.

Jeje and he smiled down at the sweet little face with its feathering of light hair, and Jeje was amazed first of all that he really was a boy (she checked twice, just to be certain) as her family was full of aunts, great-aunts, and girl cousins, and second, that this baby was going to be beautiful. She’d expected a squat little Jeje-girl.

But she fell in love with him at once, and when Tau suggested Eide as a name—a Colendi name that originally meant “winsome”—she thought it wonderful.

* * *

By winter Tau was gone again, but Jeje’s fleet was back, full of stories about helping the Delfs fight off some pirates who’d attempted to take Ghost Islands, a campaign carried out in conjunction with Barend’s fleet.

Jeje found it easier to continue to live at Dasta’s, rather than hauling Eide up and back from the octagon. As she’d expected, she had plenty of volunteer nannies, mostly from Lark Ascendant, so Eide got used to being passed from loving hands to loving hands. His smile enchanted them all.

When spring came around again, Jeje was ready to go—and she had her usual two excellent assistants who shared the harbormaster duties that couldn’t wait on her return in fall—but ought she to take along a babe in arms? Eide had begun crawling, which seemed a bad idea aboard a cutter.

She was mulling this during a spring rainstorm, watching from the windows as a team of youngsters set up an old brigantine for the Gold Bag Run, when Dasta wheeled up next to her.

“Are you going?” Dasta asked.

Jeje knew he was not talking about the Gold Bag run. She turned, and looked into Dasta’s face as he shifted the sleeping baby in the crook of his arm. She loved that expression of tenderness in his otherwise unremarkable face, so familiar from childhood. He’d grown into that ship’s prow of a nose long ago. No wonder he’d been popular among the women of Inda’s fleet. But those days were over. More surprising, there were strands of gray at his temples, though the rest of his hair was thick and brown as ever.

“We’re not even that old,” she said, as if continuing a conversation.

“Jeje, I like having you living here,” Dasta said, as Eide stirred sleeping in his arm, and began drooling into his shoulder. “It’s not so . . . so empty.”

A roar reverberated through the floorboards from below. The place was packed with privateers and traders, all waiting for the weather to lift so they could start the festival. She looked down into his earnest gaze, and knew he was not talking about any lack of custom.

“Dasta?” she said tentatively.

“I know you’re already one foot on board _Vixen_ ,” he said. “I expect you’ll want to deal with that trouble off Geranda.”

She nodded. Dasta of course had told her the rumors himself, before a fisher from the Fire Islands had come begging Jeje’s aid.

“Jeje, I know that you’re going to sail off, and that’s good. We’ve got great trade with Fire Islands, and I’m glad we’re keeping our promises.” He let out his breath shortly, aware that he was busy blabbing stuff they both knew quite well.

He looked away, out into the blue bay and its bobbing ships as he said in a low voice, “I also know it’s not in you to stay with any one person. Even Tau. Nor can he. I _know_ that.”

By this time she’d heard enough ‘knows’ to be really worried, but kept her jaw resolutely clamped so that Dasta would the sooner get to whatever was itching his breeches.

He looked down at the decking (nobody thought of it as a floor). “But if you’d stay here. When you’re in harbor. You wouldn’t have to swing that hammock up at the octagon. You could even leave Eide with me. He’s happy here. Has a lot of uncles and aunties.” He hesitated, then said, “I just want you to know that I’d like that. If you did.”

“You’re a good . . .” She was about to say ‘da’ but stopped, uncertain of herself. He wasn’t a dad. Did he want to be? “Shipmate,” she finished, and though he smiled, she knew it was weak.

She sensed that he was going to say something else, but decided against it. The sense of relief she felt didn’t prompt any questions.

And so it came to pass.

* * *

She missed Eide as fiercely as she missed Tau as the fleet sailed off to Geranda, then north to Jaro and up to Ama Hazanth. When she returned to Freedom in time for Eide’s Name Day, she found Tau there, but it was to Dasta whom Eide tottered to first. He called both men Da.

And when Jeje saw the look in Dasta’s face as Eide babbled at him, she knew that somehow they were making it work. So when, after a rip-roaring Name Day party for Eide, Dasta said to Jeje, “Would you consider marrying me? Nothing has to change in your life. Except I’d like to have a family, too, but I want everything legal,” she didn't howl a protest.

“Isn’t everything legal that needs to be?” she asked, astonished.

“If something happens. To either of us. If we’re married, then Eide has this place.”

Jeje’s mouth rounded. She had never thought about that—ever. On the Iascan coast, a girl got a small boat when she was young, and traded up as skill and hard work permitted.

“Nothing has to change,” Dasta repeated, studying her face anxiously.

Jeje turned her gaze from Dasta, who hid so much of what he’d lost, to Eide, whose future she hadn’t considered. She felt her way along new ideas, and said slowly, “Eide is half Tau’s, so by rights he gets a say. If he says yes, then yes it shall be.”

Dasta beamed.

Somewhat later, the three of them sat around a table, fresh biscuits on a place, and ale at hand, as a storm roared outside. Jeje thought with satisfaction that she didn’t have to batten anything down.

Then Dasta turned his ale mug around in his hands, and looked at Jeje. She looked back. Dasta cleared his throat, and said, “Tau, Jeje and I . . . well, we talked . . . it’s mostly about Eide, but . . . the fact is . . .”

Impatient to get it out there, Jeje said, “How about if Dasta and I marry?”

Tau cast a glance of thoughtful tenderness at Dasta, quickly hidden behind a smile. But Jeje saw it. He said, “ _Excellent_ idea! If anything happens to either of us out at sea, Eide will have a da in the eyes of any law that chooses to poke its nose into our affairs.”

Dasta beamed, and knuckled his eyes.

Jeje grinned from one man to the other. Then, because she never saw any use in fussing around, proposed, “Shall we do it tonight? We can send the official stuff off with the next cutter from Sartor.”

To her surprise, Dasta shook his head. “When the fleet is here. I want everyone on hand. I’ll even make some changes upstairs here . . . I have some big plans.” He blushed. “For our family.”

‘Our’? She cast a quick glance at Dasta as Tau looked around with an air, as if he already saw the changes. _Family_. Jeje knew that the Sartoran healer had only been able to restore enough of a sense of feeling below Dasta’s waist to sense when he needed to use the Waste Spell. There would be no need to chew gerda.

 _But there’s always trying the Birth Spell_ , she reminded herself.

Tau had noted her brow-furrowed expression, and for once, misinterpreted, thinking she was objecting to what she considered ‘fuss.’

He could see that Dasta’s plans had nearly conquered the melancholy that their longtime shipmate couldn’t always hide; Tau had seen the longing in Dasta’s face when the fleet set sail. It was time to shift the subject before things got awkward.

And he knew just how to do that. It should amuse them both. “Here’s an idea. Jeje, why don’t I take you to Colend? There’s something I believe you will enjoy. Dasta can ready things here, and when we return, you’ll have your wedding.”

“And then we could try the Birth Spell, couldn’t we?” Dasta said in a rush. “If it’s a boy, we’ll call him Inda. If a girl, well, you pick. Jeje?”

One time with the boulder gut had been enough for Jeje. “Sounds good to me,” she said feelingly.

* * *

Tau waited until they reached Colend before telling her that the most popular play in Alsais was about her.

Jeje was so startled that she jibed at the reins, and her horse sidled, tail swishing in annoyance.

“Sorry, animal, sorry,” Jeje said, awkwardly patting its neck. The last time she’d been on horseback was that nasty trail south of Bren. And that horse had been stolen. She had always suspected it was glad to get rid of her.

She said to Tau, “Who would make a play about _me?_ You mean Inda and Fox, right?”

“You met the playwright, I was given to understand. He travels frequently under the name Robin.”

“Robin? I don’t know any Robin.”

“According to him you arrived to the rescue, swords scything, and dramatically saved his princess from certain death when she took a select party out for a cruise off the coast.”

Jeje whistled. “No . . . wait. I remember. Barely, at least a year ago, maybe more. Swords doing what? It was not even a fight—the pirate turned tail and ran. But I remember that fellow. Nose like Dasta’s! I thought he wanted to hear about Inda.”

She knew that stories about their battles against the Brotherhood of Blood and the Venn had circulated around the southern half of the world for years, spinning out into wilder and wilder versions. Some of those versions the remaining members of Inda’s fleet cherished, telling them back and forth over snowy winter nights. _“Remember that old baker who insisted that he knew a woman whose son knew a courier who had witnessed, with his own two eyes, Inda killing two hundred pirates before setting Boruin’s fleet afire?”_

_“Remember that story about Fox using magic to fly from ship to ship during that battle off the Fire Islands?”_

_“Or the one where he ran a ship full of ghosts from Ghost Island against the Venn, sending them running back to Drael?”_

Tau looked over at her, and laughed. She smiled back, distracted momentarily by the glints of silver in his hair. But he didn’t look any older than he had at twenty. The heady strength of love and desire washed through her, and she could scarcely wait until they reached this Colendi city he liked so much. First thing, find some inn or other and then they were going to have some fun, just the two of them.

She laughed with anticipation, and her mood bright, commented, “I wonder how they could fit me into one of those wild tales everybody seems to be spreading?”

“Jeje,” he said, his voice warm and intimate. “I would never denigrate Inda’s real contributions to the relative peace along the strait, any more than I deny people the pleasure of tall tales. But you really don’t seem to appreciate that the more recent stories are solely about _you_.”

“Me!” she squawked. “Why? All I do is clean up some of the trash left over from the Brotherhood, and the ones the Venn didn’t squash before they ran back north.”

“Nonetheless, this play is all about you. Apparently your hawk-nosed Robin was quite inspired after his time aboard _Vixen_.”

“Huh.” She grinned at the green, rolling hills, and the distant group of people working in rice beds fed in blue, sky-reflecting strips by the canal waters. Some of the workers were singing.

She studied the placid canal burbling alongside the road, and said, “Should I get a disguise, do you think? Eyepatch? Warts?”

Tau’s eyebrows shot upward. “Why would you wish to disguise yourself with warts?”

“I don’t want anybody to recognize me. I had enough of court-type of attention when I had to go to Bren’s royal palace and face Princess Kliessen. And the way the Marlovans stared at me, when we rode north before that mess at the north end of the strait.”

Tau hid a rueful smile; only Jeje would consider the terrible Battle of Andahi Pass as a ‘mess off the strait.’ But she had not been there to see it, and so, had only the haziest idea of what land battled entailed.

They spotted the outskirts of Alsais on the horizon, and Jeje hunkered down in her saddle, convinced she had become notorious. She had left her red robe behind in Freeport—though originally Princess Wisthia had had it made for Jeje’s single visit to a royal court, it had become her harbormaster robe, which she wore when she felt she needed extra authority. All she’d packed for this trip was her only decent ship-visiting shirt, which she had been wearing for ten years at least.

It never occurred to her that she had reached one of the cities most famous for beautiful clothes, but in any case it didn’t matter. Tau led them to a charming inn that overlooked a pretty little arched bridge over a curving canal, with climbing roses and other scented blossoms outside the open windows. Clothing was definitely optional the rest of that enchanting afternoon and evening.

That night they went to the theater. Jeje put on her good shirt, and as they joined the crowd flowing into the pretty theater, at first she hunched up, but gradually relaxed when she began to realize that no one, even on the very steps of the theater, gave her a second look; she was too inexperienced with the Colendi to twig to the fact that the locals politely gave them berth after taking in Tau’s splendid face, form, and his subdued but expensive clothing, dismissing her as a servant brought to wait on him in his gallery box.

Tau led her up to the costly private area at either side of the stage, with a splendid view of the action. They had a box to themselves, where smooth, soft-voiced servitors offered them delicate pastries and fine wine.

She’d sampled three delicious layered treats when the glowglobes hanging overhead like stars flared then began to dim, glittering through the entire spectrum of colors, ending in dark blue. By then the soft, polite hum of voices had ceased.

The curtain opened, the stage mage sitting on the stool below their box made a grand gesture, and the actors trooped out as stage magic glittered around them, establishing them on the heaving deck of a grand ship. Jeje eagerly looked around the stage for a short, squat figure with short dark hair, not even listening to the dialogue until someone said, “What are your orders, Captain Jeje?”

To Jeje’s amazement, a tall, dashing woman strode out, a crimson cloak floating from her shoulders. She looked like a combination of Joret and Eflis!

Jeje had leaning over the balcony, but she jerked upright indignantly. “That’s not me,” she whispered. They had not even _tried_ to find someone who looked like her!

Tau’s shoulder, pressed against hers, shook with silent laughter. “Watch,” he whispered.

The play unfolded. Jeje observed in growing astonishment, then annoyance. She admired what action there was, but most of the story was not ship battles, and pirates being put out of business. Most of the play was that Eflis person (Jeje refused to give that character her own name) uttering pungent truths to fluttering nobles, which caused the audience to howl with laughter.

“You are so natural,” a woman masked in mauve and gray cooed. “You will create a new fashion!”

“Ah, duchas,” said the Eflis person with the crimson cloak as she threw it back grandly, “such a fashion would be impossible for you, would it not?”

The audience roared with laughter as Jeje muttered, “What is a duchas?”

“A rank under prince, which is under princess,” Tau responded—his voice nearly drowned by another gust of laughter as the Eflis said something wholly unintelligible to Jeje. As far as she could determine, it was about the color of a man’s hair ribbon, but the others acted as shocked as if Eflis had taken out a sword and started belaboring everyone in sight.

Fans snapped, waved, flirted and twirled, ribbons streamed and floated, masks appeared and disappeared on faces, except for a character dressed entirely in blue and gold, which—Tau explained later—represented one of the royal family.

In short, by the end of the play, Jeje was yawning continually, and no longer bothered asking “What does that mean?” as the answer was exactly as obscure as the original remark.

The play ended with the stage-Jeje giving a speech about how kings had to put on their trousers one leg at a time, just as she did—and if they were too busy looking at the world with their noses high, they might miss the leg and not know they were walking out into the world bare-assed.

Jeje sat upright. “Hey! She ought to have said _that_ at the start, then we could have been out of here hours ago, and enjoying ourselves in our room.”

The curtain came down amid laughter and thunderous clapping . . . all except in the second box from the right, Jeje’s face a study in conflicted emotions as she followed Tau out into the lamplit corridor.

“Jeje?” Tau hid his laughter. “I take it we will not be visiting the other theater tomorrow night?”

“You can. I’ll find something more interesting to do. Like sleep.”

Tau laughed. “Not without me, you won’t.”

They followed the patrons in their lightly scented, flowing silks. Once they reached the street again, Tau took her arm in his. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m not saying she was wrong about kings. In fact, she’s right. But. That wasn’t me. I never did any of that, I never said those words, and I don’t look like that. Why did that Robin even use my name?” Jeje looked around. “Is he here? I want to punch him in the nose.”

Tau laid a hand across her wrist, his mouth solemn but the humor lingering in his eyes. “Jeje, I’m sorry. I truly thought you would enjoy the ironies here. I know you enjoy all the wild stories about Inda.”

She sighed. “You’re right. I do. But not _this_. Maybe because it’s _me_ they’re getting wrong. Am I being a strut?”

“Not at all.”

“I still want to kick that fellow from here to Freedom.”

Tau laughed. “Here’s what I learned. Never get into it with a poet or a playwright. They are always going to win. As two duchas and a rather arrogant prince just learned.”

Jeje chewed her lip. “Is that the prince who forgot his trousers?”

“Oh, yes.”

A corner of her mouth tugged up. “All right. I guess I can see that. But! From now on,” she said grimly, “any passenger who even has a pen in their dunnage goes straight overboard.”

“That’s a promise.” Tau kissed her. “Now let’s go home to Freeport, and get you and Dasta married, and see if you two can take hands and bring young Inda into the world.”


End file.
